COLOR REVOLUTIONS AND GEOPOLITICS

Saturday, September 20, 2014

Corpus Hypercubus
(1954), by Salvador Dali ... a post-war vision of "the bearer of glad
tidings" -- realized at the same time this book was being written

The Controversy of ZionBy Douglas ReedPublished by Dolphin Press (Pty) LTD., Durban, South Africa, 1978.First Chapter Reprinted HereWith a New Introduction Written by Color Revolutions and Geopolitics

Editors' Introduction

When Douglas Reed finished writing in 1956 of a "controversy" pertaining to "Zion," what was his meaning? Was there truly a "controversy" then? And is there a "controversy" still today?Here's our thinking: how can any of us even answer these questions? How can any of us even get close to answering these questions?Because to answer these questions we first need quality information, quality perspectives.In other words, we need good books; we need free and open discussion; we need basic academic freedoms. We as a community need to think and consider and discuss (and even further discuss) all that we've read and learned.And do we --at least those of us in the Western world-- actually enjoy any of these fundamental prerequisites of learning about this broad topic? Are the library and bookstore shelves filled with books--good books! critical books! --about the history of Zionism; or about the founding of Israel? Have we exhausted ourselves, our friends, or our fellow students with real, detailed conversations about Zionism; or about the origins and behavior of Israel; or about the structure of Judaism itself? Obviously we have not. Perhaps we cannot or will not.Obviously anything even remotely close to these topics cannot be freely and openly
and critically discussed; obviously we in the Western world are fearful
about even saying the words "Jew" or "Jewish" in mixed company (let alone
having the ability to discuss frankly--and perhaps even critically--a political entity whose actions repeatedly demand criticism; an entity which refers to itself as a "Jewish State" and claims to act on behalf of the "Jewish people"). And so it is this that we arrive at as a legitimate controversy of Zion; a controversy that must be dealt with before we can even discuss the "controversy" alluded to in the book. This controversy has nothing to do with the content of Zionism itself; it has nothing to do with Israeli behavior toward Palestine; nor does it have anything to do with the topics of so-called Jewish power or of the underlying motives of Israel, the Jewish State. This controversy is instead that, at least in this one instance, at least under this one topical umbrella, we witness a complete negation of free thought and analytical discourse; the complete removal of calm discussion and public scrutiny.

And even though many have already "chosen sides" for one reason or another; and even though most have been fed a steady diet of either pro-Israeli or pro-Palestinian propaganda from their favorite partisans and sloganeers... are any of us now satisfied that this is actually a "learning environment," an environment that is conducive to enshrining quality information?

Before we get to the complicated question as to "why?" this state of self-censorship or community-censorship exists, we need to deal with the ramifications of its power on a personal level.In other words, those of us that consider ourselves responsible "adults" in the realm of thinking and learning need to then act like adults; we need to gather the necessary courage to confront this self-censorship head-on (or else feel the cruel realities of knowingly living in ignorance).Over the summer, we witnessed a vicious war between those occupying the Palestinian land and the Palestinians themselves. Day after day, if we look closely enough we read of new illegal Jewish settlements on Palestinian land, entailing the forceful removal of Palestinian families from their homes, each of these actions sponsored and supported by the Israeli government. We also read of condemnation of these acts by representatives of the Palestinian people; and of renewed tensions and deadly violence resulting in part from it. Do we want to get to the bottom of this conflict?Do we want to explore, in all its ramifications, if there is truly a "controversy" of Zion; and if so, are we courageous enough to discover what it is?Or will we remain satisfied with slogans, with Hollywood and with television; and especially with those "must-read" books that climb up the best-seller lists, promoted by the likes of our favorite radio and television personalities, and by the editors and columnists of the New York Times?

* * * * *

Reed's "Controversy" published posthumously

It would be foolish of us to try and persuade our readers what to think of Douglas Reed's book, as much as it would be irresponsible for us to offer a detailed synopsis of what the book contains: including either of these would work against the spirit of this introduction, which has been to promote doing one's own reading and thinking; and through that, to help open up our now limited discussion forums to include previously forbidden information and perspectives.

And besides: Douglas Reed spent years researching and writing, distilling this broad topic, a topic spanning three millennia, into a 600 page book.

The book is the synopsis.

If anyone wants to know what the book is about... if anyone wants to know how to feel about the book and its contents... first just read the book.

[Chapter One of Book Follows]

The Start of the Affair

The true start of this affair occurred on a day in 458 BC
which this narrative will reach in its sixth chapter. On that day the petty
Palestinian tribe of Judah (earlier disowned by the Israelites) produced a
racial creed, the disruptive effect of which on subsequent human affairs may
have exceeded that of explosives or epidemics. This was the day on which the
theory of the master-race was set up as "the Law".

At the time Judah was a small tribe among the subject-peoples
of the Persian king, and what today is known as "the West" could not
even be imagined. Now the Christian era is nearly two thousand years old and
"Western civilization", which grew out of it, is threatened with
disintegration.

The creed born in Judah 2,500 years ago, in the author's
opinion, has chiefly brought this about. The process, from original cause to
present effect, can be fairly clearly traced because the period is, in the main,
one of verifiable history.

The creed which a fanatical sect produced that day has shown
a great power over the minds of men throughout these twenty-five centuries;
hence its destructive achievement. Why it was born at that particular
moment, or ever, is something that none can explain. This is among the greatest
mysteries of our world, unless the theory that every action produces an equal
and opposite reaction is valid in the area of religious thought; so that the
impulse which at that remote time set many men searching for a universal, loving
God produced this fierce counter-idea of an exclusive, vengeful deity.

Judah-ism was retrogressive even in 458 BC, when men in the
known world were beginning to turn their eyes away from idols and tribal gods
and to look for a God of all men, of justice and of neighbourliness. Confucius
and Buddha had already pointed in that direction and the idea of one-God was
known among the neighbouring peoples of Judah. Today the claim is often made
that the religious man, Christian, Muslim or other, must pay respect to Judaism,
whatever its errors, on one incontestable ground: it was the first universal religion,
so that in a sense all universal religions descend from it. Every Jewish child
is taught this. In truth, the idea of the one-God of all men was known long
before the tribe of Judah even took shape, and Judaism was above all else the
denial of that idea. The Egyptian Book of the Dead (manuscripts of which were
found in the tombs of kings of 2,600 BC, over two thousand years before the
Judaist "Law" was completed) contains the passage: "Thou art the one, the God from the very beginnings of time, the heir of immortality, self-produced and self-born; thou didst create the earth and make man." Conversely, the Scripture produced in Judah of the Levites asked, "Who is
like unto thee, O Lord, among the Gods?" (Exodus).

The sect which attached itself to and mastered the tribe of
Judah took this rising concept of one-God of all-peoples and embodied it in its
Scripture only to destroy it, and to set up the creed based on its denial. It
is denied subtly, but with scorn, and as the creed is based on the theory of the
master-race this denial is necessary and inevitable. A master-race, if there be
one, must itself be God.

The creed which was given force of daily law in Judah in 458
BC was then and still is unique in the world. It rested on the assertion,
attributed to the tribal deity (Jehovah), that "the Israelites" (in
fact, the Judahites) were his "chosen people" who, if they did all his
"statutes and judgments", would be set over all other peoples and be
established in a "promised land". Out of this theory, whether by
forethought or unforeseen necessity, grew the pendent theories of "captivity"
and "destruction". If Jehovah were to be worshipped, as he demanded,
at a certain place in a specified land, all his worshippers had to live there.

Obviously all of them could not live there, but if they lived
elsewhere, whether by constraint or their own choice, they automatically became
"captives" of "the stranger", whom they had to "root
out", "pull down" and "destroy". Given this basic tenet
of the creed, it made no difference whether the "captors" were
conquerors or friendly hosts; their ordained lot was to be destruction or
enslavement.

Before they were destroyed or enslaved, they were, for a
time, to be "captors" of the Judahites, not in their own right, but
because the Judahites, having failed in "observance", deserved
punishment. In this way, Jehovah revealed himself as the one-God of
all-peoples: though he "knew" only the "chosen people", he
would employ the heathen to punish them for their "transgressions",
before meting out the foreordained destruction to these heathen.

The Judahites had this inheritance thrust on them. It was not
even theirs, for the "covenant", according to these Scriptures, had
been made between Jehovah and "the children of Israel", and by 458 BC
the Israelites, spurning the non-Israelitish Judahites, had long since been
absorbed by other mankind, taking with them the vision of a universal, loving
God of all men. The Israelites, from all the evidence, never knew this racial
creed which was to come down through the centuries as the Jewish religion, or
Judaism. It stands, for all time, as the product of Judah of the Levites.

What happened before 458 BC is largely lore, legend and
mythology, as distinct from the period following, the main events of which are
known. Before 458 BC, for instance, there were in the main only "oral
traditions"; the documentary period begins in the two centuries leading up
to 458 BC, when Judah had been disavowed by the Israelites. At this stage, when
the word-of-mouth tradition became written Scripture, the perversion occurred.
The surviving words of the earlier Israelites show that their tradition was a
widening one of neighbourliness under a universal God. This was changed into its
opposite by the itinerant priests who segregated the Judahites and established
the worship of Jehovah as the god of racialism, hatred and revenge.

In the earlier tradition Moses was a great tribal leader who
heard the voice of one-God speak from a burning bush and came down from a
mountain bearing this one-God's moral commandments to the people. The time when
this tradition took shape was one when the idea of religion was first moving in
the minds of men and when all the peoples were borrowing from each other's
traditions and thought.

Whence the idea of one-God may have come has already been
shown, although the earlier Egyptians themselves may have received it from
others. The figure of Moses himself, and his Law, both were taken from material
already existing. The story of Moses's discovery in the bulrushes was plainly
borrowed from the much earlier legend (with which it is identical) of a king of
Babylonia, Sargon the Elder, who lived between one and two thousand years before
him; the Commandments much resemble earlier law codes of the Egyptians,
Babylonians and Assyrians. The ancient Israelites built on current ideas, and by
this means apparently were well on the way to a universal religion when they
were swallowed up by mankind.

Then Judah put the process into reverse, so that the effect
is that of a film run backward. The masters of Judah, the Levites, as they drew
up their Law also took what they could use from the inheritance of other peoples
and worked it into the stuff they were moulding. They began with the one just
God of all men, whose voice had been briefly heard from the burning bush (in the
oral tradition) and in the course of five books of their written Law turned him
into the racial, bargaining Jehovah who promised territory, treasure, blood and
power over others in return for a ritual of sacrifice, to be performed at a
precise place in a specified land.

Thus they founded the permanent counter-movement to all
universal religions and identified the name Judah with the doctrine of
self-segregation from mankind, racial hatred, murder in the name of religion,
and revenge.

The perversion thus accomplished may be traced in the Old
Testament, where Moses first appears as the bearer of the moral commandments and
good neighbour, and ends as a racial mass-murderer, the moral commandments
having been converted into their opposites between Exodus and Numbers. In the course of this same transmutation the God who begins by commanding
the people not to kill or to covet their neighbours' goods or wives, finishes by
ordering a tribal massacre of a neighbouring people, only the virgins to be
saved alive!

Thus the achievement of the itinerant priests who mastered
the tribe of Judah, so long ago, was to turn one small, captive people away from
the rising idea of a God of all men, to reinstate a bloodthirsty tribal deity
and racial law, and to send the followers of this creed on their way through the
centuries with a destructive mission.

The creed, or revelation of God as thus presented, was based
on a version of history, every event of which had to conform with, and to
confirm the teaching. This version of history went back to the Creation, the exact
moment of which was known; as the priests also claimed to possess the future,
this was a complete story and theory of the universe from start to finish. The end was to be the triumphant consummation in Jerusalem, when world dominion was
to be established on the ruins of the heathen and their kingdoms.

The theme of mass-captivity, ending in a Jehovan vengeance
("all the firstborn of Egypt"), appears when this version of history
reaches the Egyptian phase, leading up to the mass-exodus and mass-conquest of
the promised land. This episode was necessary if the Judahites were to be
organized as a permanent disruptive force among nations and for that reason,
evidently, was invented; the Judaist scholars agree that nothing resembling the
narrative in Exodus actually occurred.

Whether Moses even lived is in dispute. "They tell you",
said the late Rabbi Emil Hirsch, "that Moses never lived. I acquiesce. If
they tell me that the story that came from Egypt is mythology, I shall not
protest; it is mythology. They tell me that the book of Isaiah, as we have it
today, is composed of writings of at least three and perhaps four different
periods; I knew it before they ever told me; before they knew it, it was my
conviction".

Whether Moses lived or not, he cannot have led any
mass-exodus from Egypt into Canaan (Palestine). No sharply-defined Israelitish
tribes existed (says Rabbi Elmer Berger) at any time when anyone called Moses
may have led some small groups out of Egyptian slavery. The Habiru (Hebrews)
then were already established in Canaan, having reached it long before
from Babylonia on the far side: Their name, Habiru, denoted no racial or tribal
identity; it meant "nomads". Long before any small band led by Moses
can have arrived they had overrun large Canaanite areas, and the governor of
Jerusalem reported to Pharaoh in Egypt, "The King no longer has any
territory, the Habiru have devastated all the King's territory".

A most zealous Zionist historian, Dr. Josef Kastein, is
equally specific about this. He will often be quoted during this narrative
because his book, like this one, covers the entire span of the controversy of
Zion (save for the last twenty-two years; it was published in 1933). He says, "Countless other Semitic and Hebrew tribes were already settled in the promised land which, Moses told his followers, was theirs by ancient right of inheritance; what matter that actual conditions in Canaan had long since effaced this right and rendered it illusory."

Dr. Kastein, a fervent Zionist, holds that the Law laid down
in the Old Testament must be fulfilled to the letter, but does not pretend to
take the version of history seriously, on which this Law is based. In this he
differs from Christian polemicists of the "every word is true" school.
He holds that the Old Testament was in fact a political programme, drafted to
meet the conditions of a time, and frequently revised to meet changing
conditions.

Historically, therefore, the Egyptian captivity, the slaying
of "all the firstborn
of Egypt", the exodus toward and conquest of the
promised land are myths. The story was invented, but the lesson, of vengeance on
the heathen, was implanted in men's minds and the deep effect continues into our
time.

It was evidently invented to turn the Judahites away from the
earlier tradition of the God who, from the burning bush, laid down a simple law
of moral behaviour and neighbourliness; by the insertion of imaginary,
allegorical incident, presented as historical truth, this tradition was
converted into its opposite and the "Law" of exclusion, hatred and
vengeance established. With this as their religion and inheritance, attested by
the historical narrative appended to it, a little band of human beings were sent
on their way into the future.

By the time of that achievement of 458 BC, many centuries
after any possible period when Moses may have lived, much had happened in Canaan.
The nomadic Habiru, supplanting the native Canaanites by penetration,
intermarriage, settlement or conquest, had thrown off a tribe called the Ben
Yisrael, or Children of Israel, which had split into a number of tribes, very
loosely confederated and often at war with each other. The main body of these
tribes, the Israelites, held the north of Canaan. In the south, isolated and
surrounded by native Canaanitish peoples, a tribe called Judah took shape. This
was the tribe from which the racial creed and such words as "Judaism",
"Jewish" and "Jew" in the course of centuries emerged.

From the moment when it first appears as an entity this tribe
of Judah has a strange look. It was always cut off, and never got on well with
its neighbours. Its origins are mysterious. It seems from the beginning, with
its ominous name, somehow to have been set apart, rather than to have been
"chosen". The Levitical Scriptures include it among the tribes of
Israel, and as the others mingled themselves with mankind this would leave it
the last claimant to the rewards promised by Jehovah to "the chosen people". However, even this claim seems to be false, for the Jewish Encyclopaedia impartially
says that Judah was "in all likelihood a non-Israelitish tribe".

This tribe with the curious air was the one which set out
into the future saddled with the doctrine drawn up by the Levites, namely, that
it was Jehovah's "chosen people" and, when it had done "all my
statutes and judgments", would inherit a promised land and dominion over
all peoples.

Among these "statutes and judgments" as the Levites
finally edited them appeared, repeatedly, the commands, "utterly destroy",
"pull down", "root out". Judah was destined to produce a
nation dedicated to destruction.

The “up and coming” well-known and much admired
Israeli politician and parliament member Ayelet Shaked of the
ultra-nationalist Jewish Home [political party] has again branded Palestinians as
terrorists, declaring as the 4th Zionist invasion of Gaza in the past
ten years was being unleashed: “Mothers of all Palestinians should also
be killed” she told the Daily Sabah, as she called for the slaughter of
Palestinian mothers who give birth to "little snakes."

In a call for Genocide, she added, “They have to die and their houses
should be demolished so that they cannot bear any more terrorists,"
Shaked said, adding, "They are all our enemies and their blood should be
on our hands. This also applies to the mothers of every dead terrorist
we eliminate."

On 7/7/14 Shaked wrote on her Facebook page:

Israeli MP Ayelet Shaked

"Behind every terrorist stands dozens of men and women, without whom he
could not engage in terrorism. They are all enemy combatants, and their
blood shall be on all their heads. Now this also includes the mothers of
the martyrs, who send them to hell with flowers and kisses. They should
follow their sons, nothing would be more just. They should go, as
should the physical homes in which they raised the snakes. Otherwise,
more little snakes will be raised there."

The development comes as many officials from various countries have
slammed Israel's air strikes on the Gaza Strip. Many have condemned the
offensive diatribe, accusing Israel of massacring the Palestinians and
have lashed out at Israel, saying it is committing state terrorism
against the Palestinians in the region. Reacting to Shaked's remarks,
the Turkish premier said Israel's policy in Gaza is no different than
Hitler's mentality. "An Israeli woman said Palestinian mothers should be
killed, too. And she's a member of the Israeli parliament. What is the
difference between this morality and Hitler’s," he said speaking in
parliament, as he also questioned the world's silence toward Tel Aviv's
ongoing atrocities.

As the Zionist regime busies itself "Mowing the lawn," the obscene
phrase used in Israeli military circles to describe how, every couple of
years or so, Gaza is subjected to massive international crimes against
humanity is a massive display of firepower to “trim back Hamas’s
military capabilities and ambitions” in the words of its allies in the
US Congress. Its US funded armed forces are yet again attacking and
invading Gaza in violation of international and U.S. law. As former US
Congressman Dennis Kucinich reminds us, its construction of settlements
violates the Oslo agreement. Its Central Bank dries up the Gaza economy
and blocks payments to Gazan civil servants. Its total control brings
the Palestinians to utter subjection and total despair. Israel can kill,
injure, and humiliate Palestinians at will, with impunity, which is
exactly what gave rise to Hamas and strengthens Hamas’ hold in Gaza.

As journalist Rami Khoury reminds us, military assaults against Gaza
cause Israel to lose ground in three vital respects inasmuch as they
enhance Palestinian military resistance, intensify global condemnation
and pressure due to Israel’s disproportionate military savagery, and
“deepen the nationalist identity and will to struggle for justice among
all Palestinians, especially those children in Gaza who will grow up
with a single aim in life: to vanquish colonial Zionism”.

Meanwhile,
on 7/22/14 one of Americas largest airlines, Delta, has announced it is
canceling all flights to Israel citing reports that a rocket landed near
Tel Aviv's airport. This against the backdrop of a growing BDS [Boycott Divestment Sanctions] campaign
increasingly similar to the one that destroyed the pro-Zionist Apartheid
regime in South Africa. The developments come as the UN agency for
Palestinian refugees has recently said women and children make up a
sizable number of Palestinian fatalities caused by Israeli attacks on
the besieged region.

Undeterred, the US Senate, while claiming to be overworked, did find
time to pass (100-0) an AIPAC-drafted resolution supporting the Gaza
invasion. There is not one word of compassion for Palestinians killed or
injured, not a word calling for peace, not a word indicating that the
Senate would perhaps prefer to see the invasion end. On the other hand,
it calls for dissolution of the Palestinian unity government which has
been Netanyahu's goal since it was established.

“Expressing the sense of the Senate regarding United States support for
the State of Israel as it defends itself against unprovoked rocket
attacks from the Hamas terrorist organization. Whereas Hamas is a United
States-designated terrorist organization whose charter calls for the
destruction of the State of Israel; Whereas Hamas continues to reject
the core principles of the Middle East Quartet (the United Nations, the
United States, the European Union, and Russia)--recognize Israel's right
to exist, renounce violence, and accept previous Israeli-Palestinian
agreements; whereas Hamas has killed hundreds of Israelis and dozens of
Americans in rocket attacks and suicide bombings.”

The same kind of Resolution that AIPAC sends more than 80 to Congress
each year to make sure Congress does the right thing by the Zionist
regime still occupying Palestine.

U.S. Senate vote supporting the killing of Palestinians by Israel passes unanimously, 100-0. Wow! What does that even mean?

On 7/22/14, Israel's ambassador to the U.S. to the media [said] that Israeli
soldiers should be given the Nobel Peace Prize for the "unimaginable
restraint" they are showing in fighting Hamas, backing his
country's right to self-defense. Ambassador Ron Dermer made the comments
at an event hosted by the Christians United for Israel group late
Monday, according to a text of the speech posted on his Facebook
page. Comparing Hamas rocket fire on Israel to Germany's bombardment of
London during World War II, Dermer slammed those "shamelessly accusing
Israel of genocide and (who) would put us in the dock for war crimes. The
truth is that the Israeli Defense Forces should be given the Nobel
Peace Prize... a Nobel Peace Prize for fighting with unimaginable
restraint."

As for the truly pathetic Ms. Shaked, whose psychotic words and deeds
not only trumpet savagery against Palestinians and praise those who
would undertake a genocidal mission such as today being witnessed and
documented in Gaza, but have also become a clarion call corrupting
further the minds of Israeli youth and colonial squatters. May the
sick woman live to see the dismantling of the last of the 19th Century
colonial enterprises which she calls to slaughter those whose land it
still criminally occupies.

Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Editors' IntroductionChristopher Stevens arrived in Benghazi, Libya as the US Special Representative to the National Transitional Council, in April, 2011, wielding a program of death and destruction. At that time the main goal of Christopher Stevens and the United States government was to subjugate the sovereign nation of Libya. More than anything else, this meant the removal of Colonel Gaddafi from power, by any and all means. Not only were tens of thousands of Libyans murdered in the civil war that Stevens helped to orchestrate. But in October, 2011, Colonel Gaddafi himself was ruthlessly gunned down in the desert: no trial, no civilized justice for the fallen leader of the once-defiant nation. "We came, we saw, he died." That is how Hillary Clinton put it. That about sums it up. With Colonel Gaddafi removed, the mission that Christopher Stevens led was immediately deemed a glowing success. He was rewarded by being appointed the ambassador of this recently conquered country, "post-revolutionary" Libya, having arrived in Tripoli in the spring of the following year to take up his post.

Christopher Stevens... expert at creating completely fake revolutions and making them seem real ...show biz must be in his nature...

On September 10th, 2012, Ambassador Stevens arrived quietly in Benghazi for a scheduled four-day trip to the city. There was no grand ceremony waiting for Stevens on this trip; no pomp and circumstance for the U.S. ambassador that, it is said, had "liberated" the country from tyranny. He came to Benghazi under the cover of darkness, accompanied only by a two-man security detail, having provided no "official" notification that he was even in the city, and without stating publicly why he had come (details which we still haven't learned even today). On the following evening, around half past nine o'clock, after Ambassador Stevens reportedly spent the entire day receiving visitors in his walled-off fifteen acre mini-fortress, that's when the attackers arrived. Within the hour, Christopher Stevens lay unconscious in a smoked-out bathroom, pronounced dead a short time later; murdered in the same city that he occupied during the bloody civil war; a victim of the self-same methods he employed.

The typical Western media narrative on the death of Christopher Stevens omits many of the details and value judgments which we have included above. In most instances this is because the Western "news" effort surrounding Ambassador Stevens' death also doubled as a deafening propaganda
campaign; a campaign which, still to this day, demands that, even if
individual opinions about the incident adopt a posture of U.S. government criticism (as they frequently do), this "criticism" must always be limited, never with full license to probe or challenge the central myths and
ideological falsehoods that shield aggressive U.S. behavior as it operates around the
world.How can any of us know the substance and motive of U.S. behavior if its most painful details remain excluded from public consideration? Further still, how can any of us know the substance and motive behind attacks against the United States, the justice of the attacks, or the character of the attackers, if all we know is a glorified rendering of what the U.S. government is and does? Benghazi has evolved into a war zone--this we now know--a city of over one million left to suffer the results of the glorious revolution sponsored by Western powers. This has been the norm for several months, since well before the ambassador's hyped death. Why did we hear nothing of it months ago? Why do we learn about this only now?And what of the other cities in "post-revolutionary" Libya, like Tawargha?

Tawargha, just south of Misrata, was once a city of around thirty thousand residents. In early August, 2011, the whole city fell victim to a sustained terror campaign led by racist armed gangs and backed by NATO bombs. Many observers have claimed that, if ever a legitimate case of "genocide" existed in Libya, this would be it. Today the town is empty, barely identifiable on a map.Perhaps our readers can tell us, how many press releases had been published documenting this tragedy? How much space did this calamity occupy in the central narrative of the revolution? Any at all?

Even after the lid on Libya had been lifted, revealing the chaos of Benghazi in recent months; even after so much interest had been generated about the "deteriorating" security situation in Libya, who yet has spoken of Tawargha? Who has spoken of Bani Walid? Which is to say, who among us has yet learned of the "real" Libya that Christopher Stevens "saved" from tyranny?

Of course much truth about Libya has been deliberately obscured from Western audiences since before the days of the "humanitarian" intervention, much like in every other war.It's only due to the fact that Christopher Stevens was in a high-profile position when he was murdered, serving as the U.S. Ambassador to Libya, that Western public opinion leaders brought any attention--any at all--tothe deadly violence that now reigns there.Christopher Stevens was the first sitting U.S. Ambassador to have been killed in the line of duty in over thirty years. Within a strictly image-oriented public relations framework, the death of an ambassador meant that Christopher Stevens was already more than an unknown diplomatic soldier falling quietly in the line of duty; already more than a mere footnote in the failures of modern American diplomacy. This much is obvious. His death was destined to bring immediate attention and public scrutiny to Obama's foreign policy agenda. The operative question would be (and still is), what will the public learn?

Will the public ever learn the identity of the Benghazi "compound" attackers? Will they read sworn testimony from eye witnesses or participants? Will they watch live video feed, that which supposedly exists documenting the incident? Will they analyze relevant photos? Or read signed statements from any "guilty parties" clarifying what motives may have been behind the attacks?

Will the public ever learn that the "Arab Spring" was not a "spontaneous" "wave" of "revolutions" but a well-planned, precisely-timed geopolitically-motivated Pentagon fake? Will they learn the lessons of the so-called "color revolutions," about how foreign leaders are routinely ousted by U.S. government operatives through false media narratives and clever psychological tricks?

Will the public learn of the numerous massacres and humanitarian crises that enveloped Libya, not because of Colonel Gaddafi, but because of the military invasion--the jet sorties, the heavy artillery--which NATO brought in from the outside? And what of the United States' point man in Libya, Christopher Stevens? Senator Joseph Lieberman said that "[Christopher Stevens] became in fact the bright symbol of America, a heroic and inspiring figure for many Libyans." Is that what the public is destined to learn?Maybe the public will learn that our "heroic and inspiring figure" personally blessed the arrival of thousands of machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades, professional sadists and torture devices into this region. Perhaps they'll also learn that, after Libya was ripped apart by the civil war, Stevens then started shipping those same weapons illegally to Syria, a move designed to destroy that country and remove that government, yet another government that now stands in their way. Stevens' sudden death at the wrong end of these weapons--and, perhaps, at the hands of the very people he delivered them to--single-handedly multiplied any risk of bringing his vicious mission--his real mission--into sharp public focus.Without leaving anything to chance, a damage control effort quickly ran into high gear. The United States propaganda apparatus was forced to respond and to reinforce the "humanitarian" myths which continue to support its mission worldwide, and so it did respond. The United States must be good, must be benevolent, must be loving, must be paternal, must be caring, must be vulnerable, must be selfless, must be just. And as the now-dead Christopher Stevens was destined to be the caretaker of these attributes, it was decided that, if the public was to learn anything of Chris Stevens, the public must learn unequivocally that Chris Stevens carried all of these saintly attributes in abundance.

This is how the Chris Stevens we know was born: a man lifted from complete obscurity, then projected to angelic heights; suspended there long enough only for us to marvel, only for us togasp before we watched him tragically fall, victim to an "act of barbarism" on the colonial frontier.What really happened? We do not claim to know all the answers here. So many questions remain unanswered; so many have yet to be asked.Doubtless that, whatever numerous lessons still hide beneath this cartoonish myth, we can only discover them by focusing upon material facts unearthed by a competent, impartial investigation. In his excellent essay (below the video), author Maximilian Forte dissected the first of the U.S. government's many unclassified "investigative" reports into the attack.

Are the Republicans really trying to get to the bottom of what happened in Benghazi? Or are they protecting a bipartisan agenda through alimited attack?

"Manifold are the ways in which the devil has sought to undermine the truth.

He is now trying to crush it, by pretending to defend it."

(Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullian of Carthage)

The State Department's "Report" on the Attack in Benghazi, Libya: The Effects of Diplomacy as Subversion

By Maximilian ForteOriginally published in CounterpunchDecember 20, 2012Images and captions added by Color Revolutions and Geopolitics

Almost immediately after the armed attack in Benghazi, Libya, on
September 11, 2012, which resulted in the death of U.S. Ambassador
Christopher Stevens, along with Sean Smith, Tyrone Woods, and Glen
Doherty, added to the destruction and looting of the U.S. facility in
Benghazi, various columnists immediately took to issuing pronouncements
on what had happened in Libya and what it meant. They all sounded so
certain. Yet, the only certainty has been the deliberate production of
uncertainty, with multiple layers of obfuscation, questions asked and
never answered, and some questions not even asked yet. This is largely
the case even now, four months after the attack and with the December 18 release of the findings of a State Department investigation into the attack. The report
was produced by the “Accountability Review Board” convened by Secretary
of State Hillary Clinton herself, and is thus lacking the impartiality
of an independent body without ties to the Obama administration or the
vested interests of those in charge of the State Department. The
investigation was led by Thomas R. Pickering (a former U.S. ambassador
to El Salvador during the height of its dirty war against opposition
movements and guerrillas tied to the FMLN), and Admiral Michael Mullen.

Michael Mullen (L) and Thomas Pickering (R). Interestingly Michael Mullen served as Obama's top military adviser during the entire NATO Libyan campaign. Sadly this is what the State Department really meant when it demanded an "independent investigation" into the Benghazi fiasco: State investigates itself. What you the citizen want to know; what is of value to you; this you will never learn.

As someone with a background in ethnohistory and archival research of
colonial documents, plus seeing that this report is “unclassified” and
is thus being circulated to various media, it struck me that the intent
of this release was to produce not answers to a problem, but rather the
State Department’s preferred version of events as the party to a
conflict in Libya that the U.S. internationalized, widened and escalated
since February 2011. There is actually little that is new in the report
that has not already been presented and debated and left unsettled in
the public sphere. Indeed, the report itself ultimately reduces
everything to a need for more security measures and better training.
This report is a very stark contrast to what some journalists were
promising us would be a “State Department bombshell.” Well it’s a dud.

The Untold Story

Imagine this: a government that regularly executes alleged enemies
abroad, using drone strikes based on supposed “intelligence,” that
routinely claims to kill “terrorist” leaders and prevent “impending”
attacks, is still not able—not even four months later—to identify the
group responsible for the attack in Benghazi. Not able, or perhaps not
willing. Instead, this report refers us to the FBI, which still has an
investigation underway. This is the same FBI that was too frightened to send agents to Benghazi
to investigate the attack, even weeks after the attack, and well after
the “crime scene” had been extensively looted and “degraded.” Instead,
this is the state of U.S. intelligence on Benghazi: “the key questions
surrounding the identity, actions and motivations of the perpetrators
remain to be determined by the ongoing criminal
investigation” (p. 2). Even if we take the report at face value, this
missing element—who are the attackers—should give anyone reason enough
for lengthy pause. The U.S. government is claiming to not know which
group attacked its staff in Benghazi, let alone the identities of the
individual attackers. This says something about the state of U.S.
“knowledge” of Libya. If we do not take the report at face value, then
it reads like a deliberate attempt to cover up what the U.S. does not
want the public to know.

In this regard, there are many possibilities, and no certainties. The
report itself offers passing acknowledgment of the “continued presence
of pro-Qaddafi supporters” (p. 15)—but does not even for a moment
consider who might have a motive to attack the U.S. facility
in Benghazi. The report does not even once mention the presence of CIA
agents in its so-called “Special Mission Compound” in Benghazi, even
though multiple reports surfaced that the attack had targeted a CIA
base, exposing the presence of CIA personnel in significant numbers, and
delivered a huge blow to CIA efforts in Libya—and to efforts to illicitly send arms to Syrian rebels via Turkey. And what was the CIA doing there?
Reportedly their work focused on “securing” weaponry looted from Libyan
government arsenals during the NATO war, such as surface-to-air
missiles, the SA-7’s. It was also reported that Ambassador Chris
Stevens’ work in Benghazi involved the transshipment of heavy weapons from Libya and into the hands of jihadists fighting to overthrow the government of Syria. Is it just a coincidence then that Syrian rebels have started using SA-7’s that they never had before? A CIA operation such as this would thus not only be violating international law,
it would also reveal the lie that is Obama’s claim that the U.S. is not
supplying Syrian rebels with weapons. This again widens the options
concerning the motives of possible attackers, including those who might
want to put a stop to such covert operations against Syria.

Under Gaddafi Libya had the highest standard of living in Africa.

What is not clear is why “Islamists” in Libya would want to attack
the Benghazi “mission.” After all, these would be some of the same
people who benefitted from NATO’s air cover, for which they pleaded, and
from Western weapons shipments during the war to overthrow the Libyan
government, and who are reportedly benefitting again by being supported
by the U.S. and its NATO partner, Turkey, in sending weapons to Syria,
with some Libyans already active in that war. How would they gain
anything, and would they not lose a great deal in launching such an
inexplicable attack against their own partners?

Unmentionable Friends

Indeed this is a major conceptual shortcoming of the report: how it
abruptly converts “militias” into “terrorists” (see p. 4). For all of
the report writers’ insistence that their job is not to identify the
attackers, the report speaks of the activities and nature of Al Qaeda
and its affiliates (p. 2). But then a question arises: if “Islamists”
and “jihadists” are a problem, why does the U.S. work with them in
Libya? Likewise, if they are as “anti-American” as is commonly assumed,
why do some actively collaborate with the U.S.? How among what the
report acknowledges is a dizzying array of militias, do U.S. officials
determine which are the good “Islamists” and which are the bad ones? The
report itself provides some interesting answers.

The authors of the report comment on how the U.S. backed war against
the USSR in Afghanistan, and the U.S.’ subsequent invasion and
occupation of Iraq, provided the networks, training, and experience that
empowered the “jihadis” that Gaddafi fought, and that continue to
destabilize Libya under U.S. auspices. Here there is not even a pause in
the report when the former monarchy based in Benghazi, U.S. interests,
and jihadists all cohabit the same paragraph, as if they were natural
partners (p. 13). Indeed, the report casually notes that the “Special
Mission’s Libyan security contingent was composed of four armed members
of the February 17 Martyrs’ Brigade (February 17)—a local umbrella
organization of militias dominant in Benghazi (some of which were
Islamist)” (p. 19). Some of which were Islamist?

U.S. Diplomatic Security agent Mario Montoya trains local Libyan guards within the State Department's "Special Mission Compound" in Benghazi, 2011.

Then there is the assertion of the Libyans’ supposed love affair with
Ambassador Stevens. If Stevens, and other foreign officials, had truly
“earned the admiration of countless numbers of Libyans” (p. 14) as
presented in the State Department’s hagiography, there should not have
been a river of attacks (a list of 20 attacks is provided, pp. 15-16,
for Benghazi alone) against U.S. and related Western targets, and
Stevens should still be alive today. In this inability to get over
themselves, the obsessive self-praise of U.S. officialdom, amounting to
what often seems like an institutionalized narcissism and hubris, there
is no discussion of why the reality of Libya is one where U.S. officials
get killed. The report only offers a remarkably simplified picture of
two kinds of potential Libyan opponents: protesters and terrorists.

The report, however, does note that a kind of tunnel vision developed
among U.S. officials in Libya—perhaps blaming them for their own
demise—a vision in which violence against the U.S. and other
international targets was normalized and effectively pushed aside. The
report comments on the possibility—at least this possibility earns their
commentary—that with so many attacks against U.S. and international
targets, it all came to be seen as normal: “the longer a post is exposed
to continuing high levels of violence the more it comes to consider
security incidents which might otherwise provoke a reaction as normal,
thus raising the threshold for an incident to cause a reassessment of
risk and mission continuation” (p. 16). On the other hand, the concept
of “resistance” appears to be forbidden, precluded from discussion.
Moreover, as I will discuss below, this line of argument holds no water
and is part of a subtle subtext of the report that places the blame for
Stevens’ death partly on Stevens himself.

Questionable Friends

It is odd, but not surprising, that the report offers the public no
considerations of the risk that results as a blowback effect of U.S.
destabilization, just as it erases any notion of resistance. Instead all
the U.S. has is friends in Libya. So how did four Americans get killed?
They were, we are told, guarded by a local militia, the February 17
militia. Unfortunately, “February 17 militia members had stopped
accompanying Special Mission vehicle movements in protest over salary
and working hours” (p. 5). Moreover, the investigators “found little
evidence that the
armed February 17 guards offered any meaningful defense” of the
“special mission” (p. 6). As for the Libyan government, the
investigators found “the Libyan government’s response to be profoundly
lacking on the night of the attacks, reflecting both weak capacity and
near absence of central government influence and control in Benghazi”
(pp. 6-7). That sounds like the Libyan “government,” such as it is, had
no capacity to help—which is quite likely true. However, that does not
explain why “an unknown individual in a Libyan Supreme Security Council
(SSC) police uniform” was spotted on the day of the attack “apparently
taking photos of the compound villas with a cell phone from the second
floor of a building under construction across the street to the north”
of the “special mission” (p. 19).

Rewriting History

The authors of this report seem compelled to provide the preferred
rendition of Libyan history, consistently making remarks that are
noteworthy for lacking almost any relevance at all to the nature and
purpose of their report. At the same time, the report adds to recent
official comments that go strikingly against the Obama narrative at the
start of the war in 2011, as if these officials suffered from amnesia
and forgot what was in the last set of talking points on the approved
and authorized view of Libya.

For example, while Obama repeatedly insisted he was against regime
change back in March of 2011, and that international intervention was
needed to protect civilians, his sole concern, there is no attempt to
maintain this illusion any longer. Thus the report, like Secretary Clinton earlier,
points out that Christopher Stevens was the U.S. “Special Envoy” to
“the rebel-led government that eventually toppled Muammar Qaddafi in
fall 2011,” and that was even before the U.S. publicly recognized that
“government” as the “sole, legitimate representative of the Libyan
people.” Stevens and his “special mission,” worked to bolster “U.S.
support for Libya’s democratic transition through engagement with
eastern Libya, the birthplace of the revolt against Qaddafi and a
regional power center” (p. 2). Put simply, this was a diplomat actively
working to overthrow a foreign government. This was a “diplomat” whose
work consisted of regime change—despite early official pronouncements to
the contrary—and in addition one whose commitment to Libya was
restricted to the eastern portion. Subverting a government was
accompanied by pandering to regionalist sentiments that have worked to
divide and destabilize Libya since the bloody coup against Gaddafi.

If anything, the report seems to suggest that “diplomacy as
subversion” is the State Department’s favored model for international
engagement, noting: “significantly increased demands on U.S. diplomats
to be present in the world’s most dangerous places to advance American
interests and connect with populations beyond capitals, and beyond host
governments’ reach” (p. 2). “Beyond host governments’ reach” is a
pleasant way of saying that U.S. diplomats advance U.S. interests by
circumventing the same legally constituted national authorities that the
U.S. officially recognizes because it requires their prior permission
to even establish an embassy. However, this model does not necessarily
rely on establishing formal embassies, a formality that can be dispensed
with in the new American diplomacy. This is the case even with Libya
today, after Gaddafi—the so-called “consulate” in Benghazi, as some
media called it, “was never a consulate,” and the report states that its
presence was “never formally notified to the Libyan government”—the
current government (pp. 14-15). Elsewhere the report speaks of the
“special mission” as having a “non-status” as a “temporary, residential
facility” (p. 5). One wonders how the Libyan government was supposed to
come to the rescue of an entity that remained a mystery.

With reference to at least unofficially legitimizing Libyan
regionalism, which reaches the point of organized secessionism in
eastern Libya, the report acknowledges that “Stevens’ presence in the
city [Benghazi] was seen as a significant sign of U.S. support for the
TNC and a recognition of the resurgence of eastern Libya’s political
influence” (p. 13). The report then validates without any question the
Benghazi narrative that, “throughout Qaddafi’s decades-long rule,
eastern Libya consistently lagged behind Tripoli in terms of
infrastructure and standard of living even as it was responsible for the
vast majority of Libya’s oil production” (p. 13). (Perhaps the U.S.
should consider moving its capital to Texas.) What the report does not
consider is that under Gaddafi other historically much more neglected
areas—those that were not the privileged seat of the old
monarchy—finally began to receive attention, and this bothered some in
Benghazi who then (as now) continue to demand nearly exclusive attention
to their own interests.

"Air force" functionary: his photo taken after dropping bombs on people he's never met

There are many other examples of the rewriting of history to better
accord with U.S. interests and designs, but none is more glaring than
the complete absence of any mention of U.S. and NATO bombings over eight
months and the presence of U.S. and British special forces on the
ground, along with hundreds of Qatari troops. The war against Libya
never happened. Instead we get a pretty portrait of valiant rebels
single-handedly defeating Gaddafi, for example: “The TNC continued
attacking the remaining Qaddafi strongholds, and Tripoli fell earlier
than expected at the end of August” (p. 14). Indeed, Libya had been
visited by “a popular uprising” (p. 13), one so popular that it required
U.S. intervention because it had no chances of success otherwise. There
is a reminder also that the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli shut down merely
days after the first street protests began—a curiously rapid decision
(p. 13).

“Oh for the love of Chris!”

The production of this report, and its intended public consumption,
is part of what might be kindly called the U.S. government’s “public
diplomacy” effort, or in more disquieting terms, strategic information
operations. The report is largely an exercise in impression management.
The result is hagiography.
Ambassador Stevens, we are told, “personified the U.S. commitment to a
free and democratic Libya” (p. 2). The Americans who were killed
possessed “selfless courage” (p. 3), and their duties were also
“performed with courage” (p. 7). Lest ye forget, the report writers
recommend that government agencies take yet another opportunity “to
recognize their exceptional valor and performance, which epitomized the
highest ideals of government service” (p. 12). Christopher Stevens was
loved, as reflected by “his ability to move in all sectors of the
population” (p. 2)—all sectors. Indeed, then he must still be
moving. Often the report reads like a self-aggrandizing lobbying effort,
self-conscious of its role as a means of marketing State Department
goals in a time of reduced budgets, and often seems as if it had been
penned directly by Secretary Clinton herself.

What is odd is that at times the report seems to almost blame Stevens
for his own death: “Embassy Tripoli did not demonstrate strong and
sustained advocacy with Washington for increased security for Special
Mission Benghazi” (p. 4). This is despite publicly available evidence to
the contrary, with a number of emails from Stevens that have been published, showing that Stevens had issued “multiple warnings” of security threats. The report nevertheless seems to find fault with him—“but you did not persuade me”
you can almost hear them say. And yet, elsewhere the report states that
Washington gave “unusual deference to his judgments” (p. 6)—so there is
a bit of a contradiction that remains unresolved.

Excitement over the "Arab Spring" in Tahrir Square: why are John McCain and Joseph Lieberman so enthusiastic??

As part of the fog of diplomacy, what remains occluded by this report
is the real story of “Benghazi Gate.” That Obama may have been keen to
cover up any role of Al Qaeda, which he had loudly proclaimed to be
decimated and left adrift after the execution of Bin Laden, is possible.
His limited symbolic capital going into the last elections, which he
barely won, could not stand to be tarnished. What seems more compelling,
occurring precisely at the time when Syria is being targeted by the
U.S. and its allies, is the role of Libya as a proxy in a covert war
against Syria. This is, after all, an administration that is almost
neurotic when it comes to maintaining secrecy (except for when leaks
serve the greater glory of the leader’s reputation). In a report that
does not even conceive of a Libyan resistance, in the midst of so many
dubious friends with agendas that may sometimes overlap with those of
the U.S. (and others times, not), one cannot expect to find a sober and
rational engagement with the realities of a Libya dismantled by U.S.
intervention. That would be like accepting blame, and the report is
driven by the need to (re)gain credit, at the expense of continuing to
sow misinformation and confusion.

2. Short video based on Maximilian Forte's book, Slouching Towards Sirte: NATO's War on Libya and Africa.

According to Forte, "this film places the 2011 US/NATO war in
Libya in a more meaningful context than that of a war to 'protect
civilians' driven by the urgent need to 'save Benghazi'. Instead it
counters such notions with the actual destruction of Sirte, and the
consistent and determined persecution of black Libyans and African
migrant workers by the armed opposition, supported by NATO, as it sought
to violently overthrow Muammar Gaddafi and the Jamahariyah. This film
takes us through some of the stock justifications for the war, focusing
on protecting civilians, the responsibility to protect (R2P), and 'genocide prevention,' and examines the racial biases and political
prejudice that underpinned them. The role of Western human rights
organizations, as well as misinformation spread through 'social media'
with the intent of fostering fear of rampaging black people, are
especially scrutinized."

3. The first two parts of a 4-part video series about the fraudulent legal (and public relations) case which justified the NATO intervention in Libya called The Humanitarian War, directed by Julien Tiel (2011):

4. Civil war and social chaos has been turned into a fashion statement! Bizarre truck advertisements we discovered in a foreign language version of Esquire magazine in December, 2011:

It is compassion and love that guides United States foreign policy in North Africa and the Middle East and there can be no doubt about it.

At least that has been the strange and wonderful idea sold to the English-speaking world these past weeks after the death of U.S. ambassador Christopher Stevens. Just like Jesus, Christopher Stevens offered the people of Libya his selfless love and received death in return. Why couldn't Libyans see this miracle of love? Why couldn't Libyans see this miracle of self-sacrifice? Maybe it's because there was no miracle. Maybe it's because Christopher Stevens was a vicious scumbag and at least one group of Libyans showed him the door.

It is precisely for this reason--to resurrect that faux miracle--that Washington's propaganda machinery joined with the corporate media to lay waste to any notion of material "truth," clubbing fact-seekers with cartoonish depictions of a saintly ambassador, working tirelessly for a saintly cause on behalf of a saintly government.

The purpose of this essay is to show--at least in this one instance--how this propaganda machinery performed its craft and why. Because the event in question was largely unanticipated, and because, by its very nature, it had to be addressed immediately, we have found that Ambassador Stevens' death has provided us with a rare opportunity to see propaganda formation at its most raw and revealing.

Selling Ambassador Christopher Stevens

In the days since Ambassador Stevens was killed, much has been spoken and published about this previously-obscure American diplomat, the overall effect being that angry, confused, ignorant Arabs killed one of the greatest human beings that has ever existed.

Below is the short list of descriptions we plucked from a mere handful of articles (published in the immediate aftermath of his death).

As we digest these selected encomiums, let us also remind ourselves of the obvious: that Ambassador Stevens was in fact a senior-level "diplomat"--a paid liar, an artificial person. This public relations aspect had been especially crucial to the work Christopher Stevens was performing in the past year, first representing the United States as their top liaison to the NATO-backed "rebels" (as that international coalition of aggressors waged their proxy "regime change" war against Libya), then later after the country was removed as a threat to totalitarian global rule, he was rewarded as the first ambassador to the now-destroyed sovereign state. First the aggressor, then the viceroy of a new colony he created.

To many observers both within Libya and elsewhere, it was the United States that pushed Libya into civil war. The challenge then became to convince Libyans--and to leave no doubts whatsoever about this--that U.S. policy had been guided by purely "humanitarian" motives.

Exactly what the United States was hoping to project about itself (through its ambassador) is revealed in this short video below, produced by the State Department, intended to be shown to a Libyan audience. A word of caution: do not show this video to young children or gullible adults...permanent brain damage and possible falling in love with Christopher Stevens may occur (we're not kidding).

Now that we've read the eulogies; now that we've seen the sunshine, the budding flowers and the smiling faces, do we think that we have been brought any closer to the truth? Most of us want really badly to believe there's truth in these words and images (most of us are victimized by this imagery and so we cannot do otherwise but to believe). And yet what is the material source of this belief? Eulogies given by those from his own culture, from his own social circles, from his own government offices; those sharing many of the same prejudices and political aims as he did? Photos taken by people that are paid to massage a delicate political climate with shallow finesse? Words from the mouth of a man that is paid to monitor and control his own image projection? Can it be said that we are now any closer to knowing the "real" Christopher Stevens?

Perhaps there are people out there that could offer a different, less appreciative story of the man and his work; or at least a truly balanced account of his life and work? Where would we find these people? And why haven't they been asked to speak?

Didn't anyone get angry when NATO war planes pounded civilian population centers
in Libya last summer? Didn't anyone get angry when patriotic Libyans and innocent civilians were rounded up, traumatized, some beaten, some tortured and then
murdered for speaking on behalf of (and defending) their country from a
foreign-backed invasion? Didn't anyone get angry when Muammar Gaddafi--the main architect of Libya's transition into the modern world--the leader of this sovereign nation--was ruthlessly gunned down without
so much as a trial, without so much as a cry of injustice from media in "civilized" nations?

Of course many were angry.

And Christopher Stevens lived and worked at the center of all this violence, murder and mayhem. His job was to demand a widening of this violence; his job was to exploit indigenous social divisions; to promote civil war; and to subjugate the country (and the people) he is said to love.

Chris Stevens was the bag man for the United States.

Any reasonable "journalism" would have highlighted these controversial aspects of his history and legacy; any reasonable "journalism" would have presented balance, if only because this balance might offer readers important clues to understand what secrets lurked behind his death.

But this was not to be. Our "journalism" ignored balance and unbiased perspective. Our "journalism" told us fairy tales instead.

Compassionate "Loving Heart" of U.S.
Policy: Here is the Conceptual Territory that the Propagandist Creates
and Defends to Advance the Goals of Empire

There is a slick methodology at work here, one which we call "Creating and Protecting the Compassionate Loving Heart of United States foreign policy."

Think of this "loving heart" as a location in some larger amorphous conceptual space in your mind--call it an "ideological" space--call it the mental battlefield where war is waged against your common sense and good judgment about the very world you live in--call it the place where 'matter' turns into concept and meaning--or the lens through which you see and judge manifestations in the political world.

The United States government, through its propaganda apparatus, has a motive--always--to be tinkering in this larger conceptual space. The propagandist really wants to own this territory; wants to select, limit and define what "facts" and impressions should be included in this territory; wants to dictate which parts of these "facts" and impressions should be considered "good" and which parts should be considered "evil"; which parts are "sane" and which should be considered "crazy"; which parts can be reasonably debated and which cannot.

Make sure to get that flag in the picture...

It is within this space that a "loving heart" (or brand image for the United States) has been created and nurtured, it functions as the lens through which we look directly at (and judge) U.S. policy. If the United States government does anything--build; destroy; kill; save; help; hurt; enable; penalize--the function of the "loving heart" is to convince public opinion that the U.S. government does so, not out of greed or ignorance or malevolence--not out of self-interest or group interest--but out of self-sacrifice, compassion and love.

More pointedly, if the United States bombed Libya and killed its leader last year, it did so out of self-sacrifice, compassion and love.

Since his death, Christopher Stevens has become the centerpiece of this "loving heart" propaganda scheme. He has been transformed into an idea, irrespective of any actual behavioral traits, both Christopher Stevens and the United States will continue to be shown to the world as the embodiment of a loving "humanitarian" mission. When Christopher Stevens smiles, it is the United States that smiles. It is the United States that speaks the language and pays respect to the culture; it is the United States foreign policy apparatus that lays claim to friendship; the United States government is "in love with the Middle East"; the United States government "risked [its] life to stop a tyrant"; the United States government has "probably done more than anybody on the planet to help the Libyan people"; and the United States government has been martyred at the hands of those it sacrificed itself to "save."

No Sane Person Ever Dislikes the United States

When we read about a country that we've never visited, that we know little about; a place where the nuance of its language or culture is completely unknown to us; and against which a decades-long ideological and cultural war has been waged...is it any wonder that our public opinion leaders can ignore "reality" and replace it with a fictitious narrative of their choosing?

According to senior U.S. officials and the corporate media apparatus, there are two generic versions of what happened in Benghazi, Libya on the evening of September 11 of this month, each of them slightly different. But perhaps what's more important than their differences is what they both have in common. Both reinforce the two-pronged myth that the United States is in Libya to "help" the "Libyan people," and that the "Libyan people" love the United States.

The White House's generic version was crystallized last Friday, September 14, by Press Secretary Jay Carney:

The underlying idea here is "spontaneity" and a focus on "protesters" and "victims."

Common sense dictates that the whole "Libyan people" cannot be said to love the United States and their self-sacrificing "democracy" mission if there are calculated, military-style acts of political violence directed against it. Calculation presupposes careful logic and sophistication. The successful assault against an American consulate and the killing of an American ambassador presupposes planning and organization. It might even be indicative of deep-seated hatred and resentment on the part of "the people" the United States claimed to "save."

The 'spontaneity' narrative has been designed to deny Libyans a deep-seated hatred or a legitimate expression of political violence. The focus here is, instead, on emotion and reaction; and on "protesting," a legitimate form of "democratic" expression. These "spontaneous wave of protests" were brought about, not because of anything real, not because of anything with genuine political value, but because of that crudely-made Youtube video, the one that nobody has seen and nobody can reasonably vouch for, the one that is said to insult the Prophet Mohammad. Which is to say, the "Arab people" are victims here, not culprits, not killers (never mind that this reading implies an insult to the Arab: intellectual dunces, emotional weaklings, incapable of even basic political discernment; dragged into the streets by their own violent rage, victims of past insults and residual misunderstandings, unable to exercise control over their physical bodies...zombies fixated on the "Great Satan"...always with a lot of signs in English and always with a serious flag collection at their disposal).

"Extremism" is the culprit of both the protests and the armed attacks: either right-wing racist bigots (the supposed filmmakers) or "terrorists" "linked to al Qaeda."

These "extremists" are not representative of the true Libya or of true Western sentiment, it is said. True Libyans love the United States and cling to their "democratic" expression. True Americans and true Westerners love Libyans and want to help them succeed in their "democracy." Like so many other places, "al Qaeda" (a foreign terrorist element) "hijacked" a completely legitimate "spontaneous protest" and tried to make it their own.

There is another "official story" circulating, however. This one has been sponsored by both the Libyan government and the United States Department of Defense. This one claims that the assault on the American consulate in Benghazi was well-coordinated, well-organized, not connected to the protests at all. This one says the violence was planned and carried out by "Muslim extremists."

United States Senator John McCain, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, had this to say:

The underlying idea behind this alternative narrative is to focus on the culprits; to define them and judge them. This narrative is also designed, we imagine, to answer questions about how the (guarded) United States compound could be penetrated; how the ambassador of the most powerful country in the world could be reached, and could be killed.

"Al Qaeda" is implicitly the central character of this narrative and what is ridiculously implied is that only they could logistically pull off such a planned assault, not any faction from within Libya itself. And, anyway, why would "Libyans" want to attack the U.S. consulate? What reason would they have? The United States loved and saved this country from an evil "dictator." The United States gave this country "democracy." No, the "Libyan people" had neither the means nor the motivation to carry out an attack of this kind.

It is indeed curious how two competing narratives are able to be sold simultaneously to the public by members of the same administration, the same power apparatus. Will there ever be one definitive version that will survive? And if so, which one will it be?

While we cannot be certain of this answer, we do know that for a whole year since the killing of Gaddafi, all "news" about Libya disappeared completely from Western public consciousness. Libya was "liberated" and then strangely Libya did not exist. All that was really happening in Libya--the murders, the chaos, the real power struggle, the real social and political challenges--all this was conveniently damned to darkness and obscurity. Nobody was "selling" Libya anymore and so nobody was asked to care. It was only because of an ambassador's death--no more, no less--that the bloody mess that has become modern Libya has reemerged for public consideration. And what a Libya we discover!

And so we ask again, will there ever be one definitive version of the event that will survive?

When Libya gets damned back to obscurity again, will anybody even care?

Imagined Reality Versus Physical Reality

A performance artist? Is this street theater?

"Libyans,""the Libyan people" and "Muslim extremist" are actually brands: the "Libyan people" always live within the "loving heart," meaning that whichever grouping gets dubbed as the "Libyan people" are always "good" and deserving of United States' paternal love and compassion. The "Muslim extremist" however lives outside the "loving heart," which means that whoever gets attached to this moniker are always "bad," probably "terrorists" and therefore deserving of the wrath which the powerful United States military apparatus may decide to invoke.

Welcome to the simple mathematics of imperialism in the modern world. Obviously imperialism would not work as well if its caretakers were telling us the truth: if they told the world, for example, that the reason why they have killed Colonel Gaddafi and bombed Libya is because they want oil and gold, support for military bases in Africa, monopolization of the Mediterranean, or greater diplomatic and economic leverage on the African continent. For most of us--and especially for those in Libya--this kind of salesmanship just will not do.

And so there has been created a salesman's reality, a liar's reality, one that successfully packages unpopular motive and behavior in a language that we simply cannot resist.

We Don't Know

So who really killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and why?

Here is the question that almost everyone is orbiting around--every political analyst, every essayist, every blogger, every talking head--those in the alternative and mainstream media alike--and almost everyone has put forth an elaborate answer or speculation.

Mark Robertson and Finian Cunningham recently published a short list of the most visible of these "claims, counter-claims and disinformation." They wrote:

The Obama regime says “protesters” irate over an anti-Islam video did it.

The NATO-installed bureaucrats in Libya say that “foreign extremists” did it.

US Congressmen say “Al Qaeda did it”. So does CNN, as well as the
alternative media web site Prison Planet, which denounces any reference
to the Green Resistance as “absurd”.

The Sunni monarchs of the Gulf Cooperation Council oil sheikdoms say “Iran did it”.

Even reputable alternative media writers and progressive bloggers
have attributed the attack to “the Benghazi Islamists”, and that this is
“blowback from imperialism”.

Wikileaks says the attack happened because the US had backed
Britain’s threat to storm the Ecuadorian embassy in London and remove
Julian Assange. (2)

Some media outlets claim that “Al Qaeda” carried out the attack in
revenge for the supposed death in Pakistan (by US drone strike on 4 June
2012) of Libyan-born Abu Yahya Al Libi (aka Hassan Mohammed Qaid) who
was supposedly a key aide to Osama bin Laden, and was supposedly the
“number two man” in Al Qaeda.

But what can we really know if our speculations are not grounded by material details?

And considering the sorry state of the corporate-controlled media environment today, what details can we reliably trust?

Tonight we sit, the two authors of this essay, thousands of miles away from Libya, neither of us able to speak or read Arabic, neither of us ever having visited Libya... limited by time... limited by resources... limited by our own intelligence...

...and yet, still, both of us pawing through news reports...

...news reports provided by our information handlers...

...looking for a single solitary detail...

...looking for a story to tell...a story with real insight and value...

And here's what we find: "thousands of Libyans enraged by the lawlessness of armed militias and the killing of the popular US ambassador, have stormed the compounds of Islamist groups in Benghazi, driving them out of the Eastern city." "We demand justice for Stevens," one protest sign is claimed to have said. "Libya lost a friend," said another. [emphasis ours]

Can we really vouch for the truth of this event? Or the perspective from which it came?

How about we, instead, pause and take a step back?

Because last year we did not discover one mainstream "news" article that offered journalistic balance to Colonel Gaddafi's legacy in Libya... not one article that offered journalistic balance to the means and purpose of NATO's role... nothing even remotely critical of the "responsibility to protect" doctrine... not one challenge to the myth of the "humanitarian war."

Gaddafi as post-colonial liberator: an idea that has been excised from memory

And there's certainly nothing we have discovered about our media to suggest that anything has changed.

Is this observation not true enough? Certainly there is value in acknowledging that.

About This Site:

Color revolutions are, without a doubt, one of the main features of global political developments today. Should the casual reader immediately wonder what a "color revolution" is, keep reading, our view here is unique, but we most certainly have some answers.

Let us first begin with the Wikipedia definition. That website introduces the concept by stating the following:

"Color revolution(s)is a term used by the media to describe related [political] movements that developed in several societies in the CIS (former USSR) and Balkan states during the early 2000s. Some observers have called the events a revolutionary wave.

"Participants in the color revolutions have mostly used nonviolent resistance, also called civil resistance. Such methods as demonstrations, strikes and interventions have been [used to] protest against governments seen as corrupt and/or authoritarian, and to advocate democracy; and they have also created strong pressure for change. These movements all adopted a specific color or flower as their symbol. The color revolutions are notable for the important role of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and particularly student activists in organizing creative non-violent resistance.

"These movements have been successful in Serbia (especially the Bulldozer Revolution of 2000), in Georgia's Rose Revolution (2003), in Ukraine's Orange Revolution (2004), in Lebanon's Cedar Revolution and (though more violent than the previous ones) in Kyrgyzstan's Tulip Revolution (2005), in Kuwait's Blue Revolution (2005), in Iraq's Purple Revolution (2005), and in Czechoslovakia's Velvet Revolution (1989), but failed in Iran's Green Revolution (2009–2010) . Each time massive street protests followed disputed elections or request of fair elections and led to the resignation or overthrow of leaders considered by their opponents to be authoritarian."

What the Wikipedia article fails to mention is the massive foreign funding, and at least any notion that color revolutions are psychosocial operations of deception.

It's a fact that Western governments (especially the US government) and various non-governmental organizations (NGOs) spend millions of dollars to co-opt and "channel" local populations of targeted countries against their own political leadership.

Empty democracy slogans and flashy colors aside, we argue that color revolutions are good old-fashioned regime change operations: destabilization without the tanks.

The secret ingredient is a sophisticated science used to manipulate emotions and circumvent critical thinking. History shows that, to much of the power elite, humanity is seen as a collection of nerve endings to be pushed and pulled one way or the other, sometimes made to tremble in fear, sometimes made to salivate like Pavlov's dogs. These days the manipulation is so pervasive, so subtle, so effective, that even critical individuals at times must necessarily fail to recognize how often--or in what context--they have fallen prey.

Of course fear is the most obvious emotion played upon to effect massive social change. One need only to reflect upon the last ten years, since 9/11, to know that fear is a primary instrument used to initiate and justify dangerous shifts in public policy.

But as humanity has been physiologically equipped with a range of emotions, and is not merely arrested and controlled by fear alone, a strata of behavioral and political science also found it useful to master the flip-side of the emotional spectrum, and by that we mean desire, and all that drives groups of individuals to act, even in the face of fear, in pursuit of something worthwhile.

Many are the professions that utilize this type of understanding, including (but not limited to) marketing, advertising, public relations, politics and law-making, radio, television, journalism and news, film, music, general business and salesmanship; each of them selling, branding, promoting, entertaining, sloganeering, framing, explaining, creating friends and enemies, arguing likes and dislikes, setting the boundaries of good and evil: in many cases using their talents to circumvent their audiences' intellect, the real target being emotional, oftentimes even subconscious.

(Legs for educational purposes only)

Looking beneath the facade of the color revolutionary movement we also find a desire-based behavioral structure, in particular one that has been built upon historical lessons offered by social movements and periods of political upheaval.

It then makes sense that the personnel of such operations include perception managers, PR firms, pollsters and opinion-makers in the social media. Through the operational infrastructure, these entities work in close coordination with intelligence agents, local and foreign activists, strategists and tacticians, tax-exempt foundations, governmental agencies, and a host of non- governmental organizations.

Collectively, their job is to make a palace coup (of their sponsorship) seem like a social revolution; to help fill the streets with fearless demonstrators advocating on behalf of a government of their choosing, which then legitimizes the sham governments with the authenticity of popular democracy and revolutionary fervor.

Because the operatives perform much of their craft in the open, their effectiveness is heavily predicated upon their ability to veil the influence backing them, and the long-term intentions guiding their work.

Their effectiveness is predicated on their ability to deceive, targeting both local populations and foreign audiences with highly-misleading interpretations of the underlying causes provoking these events.

And this is where we come in: to help deconstruct the deception.

But we will not just cover color revolutions here, as color revolutions are bound up in the larger geopolitical universe. A color revolution is only an instrument of foreign policy--only a tool--the ultimate object being the geopolitical advantages gained by powerful financiers and the brain trust they employ. It follows that understanding geopolitical context (and motive) is necessary to understanding the purpose of the color revolution.

Toward that end, we will discuss and analyze relationships of global power in great detail. We will highlight specific institutions of power; identify what their power rests upon; draw attention to the individuals that finance and direct their activities; speculate upon some of their motives; and get to know the broad range of tools they use to achieve them, tools which include the color revolution.

As in-depth studies into the color revolution are far too rare, and as the issue itself is far too obscure, we hope to draw more attention to it; to spark discussion and even debate.

It is an issue that takes time and patience. And it is for those that are willing to provide this time and patience that we offer this site.

“Never utter these words: 'I do not know this, therefore it is false.' One must study to know; know to understand; understand to judge.” --Apothegm of Narada

Geopolitical Writers and Critics:

Webster Tarpley: based in Washington D.C., Dr. Tarpley is an author, economist, historian, and expert in geopolitics, covert operations and false-flag terror.

Tony Cartalucci: based in Thailand, Mr. Cartalucci writes primarily about color revolutions, globalism, and Thai politics on his site, Land Destroyer.

F. William Engdahl: US-born author, economist, and historian, Mr. Engdahl is based in Germany, and publishes new online material usually on his own site, or at globalresearch.ca.

News Sites:

Global Research: website of the Centre for Research on Globalization, edited by Michel Chossudovsky, featuring multiple perspectives on globalism and geopolitics, including some of the most factual news perspectives regarding all geographical regions around the globe.

Infowars: the primary website of radio host and documentary filmmaker Alex Jones, based in Austin, Texas.